Dead Sun
by Melbourne Ardell
Summary: Years ago, the sun vanished from sight. Sam and Dean find themselves alone, battling the monsters that came with the darkness. But this is not a fight that they can win without help.


_He was holding that small hand in his own, gently pulling him along as they ran through the meadows, laughing and shrieking with joy. The sun was so warm on his freckled face, and everything was bright and gold and wonderful._

Dean's eyes fluttered open, and he was only the slightest bit disappointed to see only darkness. What had he expected? Dreams were dreams; memories were memories; reality was reality. He licked his chapped lips as though trying to remember what the sun tasted like, before scrambling to his feet.

He looked down at the bare patch of cracked cement beside him. "Sammy?" His brother was nowhere in sight. As his guts twisted around themselves, he pulled out his silver knife and stumbled out of the ramshackle shed into the fresh air.

"_Sammy?" _he asked again, this time in a whisper, in case any ears were listening in. He carefully stalked forward through the knee-high grass, trying to pick out anything in the darkness that moved against the wind.

He tread lightly, careful not to make a sound-even a crunch that was too loud could mean the end of him.

After a few more moments of silence, he heard a rustling behind him, disrupting the still silence of the air. Spinning around, he held his knife at the ready, prepared to stab, slash, and gouge-

But it was only Sam, wide-eyed and startled by the ferocity in Dean's eyes. "Woah man, calm down-it's just me."

"I can see that, thank you. What the hell are you doing out here Sammy? I thought something had ganked you." His guts were beginning to unravel, and his breathing was slowly becoming even again, now that he saw his little brother safe in front of him.

"I was just walking around. What are you even doing awake? It's the middle of the night."

"Is it? It's impossible to tell these days, you know that."

It was true; ever since the darkness had crept over the land years ago, it nearly always looked like night. The sun never shone; during the day, the clouds were so thick it was barely brighter out than it was at midnight. Once in a rare while, a thin patch of clouds would cross over, and Dean would get his hopes up-_maybe_, just maybe, a ray of sunlight would break through, if only for a moment.

But he had long since stopped allowing himself to think so. The sun was dead- it only lived in his memories, in the days of his childhood where he and Sammy would run through fields and hills and woods, sunlight splattering their young, happy faces. But neither of them had smiled in so long, that Dean wasn't sure they even remembered how. And as far as anyone knew, the sun would never shine again.

That wasn't the worst of it either-with the darkness had come…_things_-monsters, demons, spirits-all those things that thrive in shadows and shrink away from daylight. Sam and Dean had stopped running from them long ago. At one point in their lives, sometime after they realized they were all alone, they decided that running away to survive was not enough. Sam remembered even less of the sun than Dean, but in a way that had made him even more desperate to see it.

And they decided that if these creatures came with the darkness, perhaps they _brought_ the darkness. And perhaps, if they hunted these monsters, and rid the land of them, the darkness would become moribund as well, and eventually even leave completely. Perhaps they could see the sun again.

But they had lived like this for years-traveling in the darkness, slaying anything they came across that was macabre or evil in its nature. And still the sun had not peeked through, had not even glimpsed at them to murmur "you are doing well; there is hope, keep going."

They kept fighting anyways, though, because the other option was giving up, lying down their weapons and dying without ever seeing the sun again, and that was something they absolutely refused to do. If they died in the darkness, they would die with a knife or a gun in their hands, having fought to the last breath to bring sunlight again upon the earth. It was the only way they would go.

Dean was jerked back to reality by the hoot of an owl somewhere far above their heads. "Couldn't sleep," he added. "We may as well get going. I don't like the sound of that goddamn bird."

"I told you, it's impossible to tell if an animal is Dark by the _sound_ it makes. It's the eyes."

"Well, I don't plan on getting close enough to any of those bastards to see their eyes. And I say that bird sounds foul."

Sam shrugged his shoulder. "Suit yourself. I'm pretty sure we've cleared this area out for the time being."

Dean glanced up at the sky above them; whether there were any monsters left there or not, storm clouds still hid any stars from view.

After a few hours of walking, when the clouds had turned from black to a deep grey-blue, they emerged from the tangled woods into an open green field that seemed to sway in the wind.

"I don't like this," Dean said nearly immediately. "It's too open. Anything could see us, and there's no shelter."

"Speak for yourself; I'm sick of the woods."

Despite Dean's fears, there was not a sound aside from the rustling of the grass; not a bird chirped, and everything was as in a state of still silence.

On the horizon, there was a line of deep gold-not glowing, of course, but it was still something yellow, and that was enough to greatly fascinate the brothers.

"What is that?" Dean asked warily.

"It looks like a field of wheat."

"Wheat? Do you think someone actually _lives_ there?"

"Doubtful. It's probably from a long time ago."

"After this much time though, you'd think it wouldn't be growing anymore, or at least look a bit more, well, dead."

"Hmm…"

As they got closer, there did, in fact, seem to be a small bit of light emanating from deep within, visible as a flicker between the stalks of wheat every once in a while.

When they arrived at the beginning of the wheat, the boys stopped and looked uncertainly at each other.

"I'll go in and see what it is-you wait here," Dean told his brother.

"There's _no way_ I'm letting you go in there alone."

"If it's dangerous, I'm not dragging you in. If I need help, trust me, you'll hear. I won't go too far."

Sam scrunched his nose. "Fine. But I still don't like it."

Cautiously, Dean parted the wheat and began carefully traipsing through, trying to make as little noise as possible. It didn't take long for him to realize that he couldn't tell which way he had come, or which direction he was going. Repressing his panic, he continued forward, towards the flicker of light that always seemed ahead of him.

As he grew closer to the source, a hollow desperation clawed a place in his stomach; because all the light reminded him of was the sun, and he knew that when he reached it and found fire, or demonic work, or death, another fragment of him would break.

However, as he approached the light, he could not prevent that sliver of hope from surfacing in his heart. Slowly, and with many reservations, he reached forward and pushed back the last bit of wheat, and stepped forward into a small, circular clearing.

Except it wasn't a clearing at all, really; it was simply a circle of flattened wheat-a perfect circle at that. All around it stood more wheat, and Dean realized he must be in the very heart of the thing.

The only other thing, though, that was a bit of a problem, was that there was something-no, some_one_, lying in the clearing.

His head was topped with a messy mop of dark brown hair, and he was clothed in a long, tan coat. The light, it seemed, was radiating from him, and it was certainly the closest thing that Dean had felt to sunlight in many years. The very air felt warm and welcoming, and Dean very nearly forgot all of his worries.

Cautiously, his hand gripping the knife concealed in his pocket, the boy stepped forward and knelt down beside the unmoving form; however, he had a feeling that whoever this was, they were not a threat to him-and that was not a feeling he had had in a very long time. He tenderly placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, and rolled him over onto his back. His face was pale and fair, and looked surprisingly young and peaceful-no older than Dean.

As Dean watched, his eyelids fluttered open, and Dean practically gasped. The boy's eyes were the color of the sky on a sunny day, and seemed to emanate golden light as well as the rest of him. The boy, still lying on the crumpled wheat, looked up at Dean in shock.

"Who are you?" His voice was surprisingly gruff, considering how delicate he looked otherwise.

"I could ask you the same."

"I'm…I'm not sure. I'm called Castiel. I fell from the sky." He slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes with a clenched fist.

Green eyes met blue. "You fell from the _sky?_"

"Yes."

"…"

"What is it?"

"This might sound a bit ridiculous, but, er, is there, well, anything past the clouds?"

The boy ran a hand through his hair and cocked his head-Dean couldn't help but think of the owl he had heard earlier that night. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the clouds," Dean gestured upward, and felt immediately like a moron. "Is there anything past them? Is it just clouds and darkness forever, or is there something…more?"

Castiel seemed to understand his question. He gave him a sad smile. "Is there a sun?"

Dean nodded, no longer meeting the boy's eyes.

"Maybe. Honestly, I don't quite know."

"…are _you _the sun?" Dean didn't know why he asked it-maybe because the boy simply revoked memories of a happier time, or because he was glowing, or because his eyes were the sky.

Understandably, Castiel looked more puzzled than ever before. "Am _I _the sun? I don't know that either. I feel very warm, though. And the darkness seems not to affect me. Perhaps I am a part of it."

"A sliver of sunlight," Dean whispered, hardly believing his ears. Maybe all of the fighting and bloodshed was not in vain after all. Maybe somehow he and Sammy had _brought_ this boy here. A sliver of sunlight upon the earth. Maybe the clouds were getting thinner. And as Dean looked into the boy's eyes, and watched his pale lips curve upward into a faltering smile, he was almost able to believe it.

"So who are _you_?" the sky-eyed boy asked him curiously, still sitting upon the ground.

"My name is Dean Winchester," he supplied, finally relaxing his grip on his knife and joining the boy on top of the wheat. "My brother and I hunt the monsters that came when the sun hid away."

"Why?"

"What'd ya mean?"

"Why do you hunt the monsters? For survival?"

"Partially, yes. But we've kinda taken it as our…well, our mission. To vanquish the goddamn things and…"

"And?"

"Call us crazy, but we think that the monsters brought the darkness with them, rather than vice versa. So we think that if we kill the monsters…"

"You can bring back the sun."

Dean's smile almost reached his eyes. "Yes."

And despite the sheer impossibility of the mission he and his brother were faced with, as he looked at the stunning boy sitting beside him, Dean felt a part of himself click back into place. Maybe some broken things could be fixed.


End file.
